Friday is set to be an important date for Apple as the company heads for the courtroom in three separate cases, two pertaining to its ongoing patent fight against Samsung and another regarding the U.S. Justice Department's e-books antitrust suit.

Google's Android operating system continues to dominate the smartphone segment in terms of shipped devices, with an 80 percent share in the latest quarter according to new data, while Apple's iPhone accounts for less and less of shipments in a growing market.

Apple and Samsung continue to tower over all other smartphone manufacturers, according to a new study, but a number of Chinese vendors are making some headway as they have home-field advantage in the world's most populous nation.

As Samsung looks to lessen its reliance on Google's Android platform, the company views its own custom Tizen operating system as a viable alternative that could power the company's future flagship smartphones.

As Samsung has lost over a billion dollars in market value, the South Korean government has shown concern that the company's patent rights may be negatively affected following a presidential veto in its U.S.-based intellectual property dispute with Apple.

Patent disputes in the U.S. could change significantly, with the International Trade Commission playing a less important role, following a veto from President Barack Obama's administration in the ongoing Apple-Samsung litigation.

While efforts by Apple and Samsung to enforce their respective patent rights are often equated as back-and-forth arguments among twin giants who irrationally refuse to settle their legal disputes rather than innovate and compete in the market, there's a vast difference between the legitimacy of their respective intellectual property claims and what each company is demanding.

While market research firms publicly report that Apple's iPad is "losing market share" in tablet shipments, their data also says something else: Apple continues to obliterate Samsung, Google's Android, Microsoft, Amazon and the rest of the industry in tablet profits.

The U.S. International Trade Commission on Thursday filed an extension of its decision on whether Samsung infringed on certain Apple patents, a claim that could see a sales ban of products made by the South Korean tech giant.

Users contributing Android bug reports to the StackOverflow developer community were offered cash in exchange for "organically" directing interest to a promotion aimed at creating Android apps with features that only work on certain Samsung phones.

Ahead of a U.S. International Trade Commission ban of older Apple iPhone and iPad models, a bipartisan cadre of senators has sent a cautionary letter to Trade Representative Michael Froman, who is responsible for the Presidential review of the ITC order.

Apple remains the most profitable company in the smartphone industry, though its lead over rival Samsung is shrinking, as just 3 percentage points separated the two companies during the second quarter of calendar 2013.

Tipped off by a report from hacker in Luxembourg that accused Samsung of increasing the clock speed of its Android-based Galaxy S 4 specifically, and only, when running certain benchmarks, AnandTech investigated and confirmed that it is indeed cheating to win in performance tests, by design.